


Applying Skills

by phnelt



Category: Taken (Movies 2008 2012 2014)
Genre: Gen, background Bryan/Lenore, brief mentions of drinking, bryan has to get home for kim's birthday, that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27873213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phnelt/pseuds/phnelt
Summary: When Kim was born, he’d burst into the operating room, grateful that the need to scrub up had given him a chance to change and get every bit of blood out of his knuckles. And the surgeon had passed her into his arms, tiny and red and unutterably perfect. He’d promised then, silently, and then out loud later when Lenore had woken up. Bryan would be there for every one of Kim’s birthdays. He would be the dad operating the video camera. Lenore had patted his hand and said “Okay,” and that was it. Even if Lenore would forgive him, and explain it to Kim, he would never forgive himself.And this year would be no different.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Applying Skills

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Karios](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karios/gifts).



> Happy yuletide Karios!

It was a common saying, Bryan thought, that the life of an operative was an unreliable one. And not entirely accurate. There were many things Bryan could not rely on when he was on assignment. Where his next meal was coming from was often one of them. What supplies his handler should have provided him and hadn’t, always. And yes, of course life was always full of calculation and re-calculation, but his entire job was predicated on the idea that he could and would respond to situations to produce the same reliable result: mission success. 

Operatives liked having the excuse though. _I have some skills,_ they’d say, _and none of them loan themselves towards being on time to dinner with your parents._ And how could anyone argue with that? An uninitiated person could never tell if an operative had missed an anniversary because they’d been strung up by their toenails in a suspiciously empty warehouse or if they’d decided to take the long way back home with a stopover in Goa to drink on the beach and avoid awkward conversations about their future goals and intentions. 

Bryan had never understood that, though. To be lucky enough to have someone love him and want him around despite the way he would force a hostess at a restaurant to re-seat them to a worse table if it meant that he didn’t have to put his back to the door? To have someone smile at him in the morning after keeping them awake with restless sweats and teeth-gritting silent nightmares? 

To be privileged enough to know someone compassionate, and wickedly funny. With a gorgeous smile and soft dark hair that she tied up into a ponytail when she was making muffins in their kitchen in the soft yellow morning light. 

Why risk that? 

To have even a taste of that in his life, well. And to have enough of this beautiful, amazing person that she wanted to make another smaller, equally amazing person who had all of her best qualities? 

For that Bryan would ensure that he used every special skill he had to keep the promises he’d made. 

When Kim was born, he’d burst into the operating room, grateful that the need to scrub up had given him a chance to change and get every bit of blood out of his knuckles. And the surgeon had passed her into his arms, tiny and red and unutterably perfect. He’d promised then, silently, and then out loud later when Lenore had woken up. Bryan would be there for every one of Kim’s birthdays. He would be the dad operating the video camera. Lenore had patted his hand and said “Okay,” and that was it. Even if Lenore would forgive him, and explain it to Kim, he would never forgive himself. 

And this year would be no different. 

Bryan grit his teeth and firmed up his grip on the underside of the car. This hadn’t been his first idea for an approach, but the Russian billionaire he was targeting had decamped to his estate on lake Baikal and was only entering and exiting via private helipad. Food was only going in rarely and by truck. 

When Bryan had realised this he’d given himself twelve seconds to clench his jaw and glare at the sky. This mission had taken him more than a month of reconnaissance and strategising and someone must have tipped the target off at the very last moment. It was the only explanation. Now his whole plan was burned. And it was two weeks until Kim’s birthday. 

That was the point that another, lesser, operative might have called back to base. He might have gotten some assistance that way, but more likely he would have been subjected to an email chain argument so massive that it would require creating another data processing centre out in the desert somewhere. Arguments and counter-arguments of what to do and all of it conducted while Bryan kicked his heels and waited. And waiting was something he was not prepared to do, not now. 

It wasn’t as if any of them could plan better than he could. It wasn’t true that no plan survived contact with the enemy. Yes, strategies crumpled and failed, but it was his _job_ to plan. He knew his plans were so good that he could, and often did, set his watch to them. He knew that if he wasn’t able to clear a building in five minutes he wouldn’t be able to clear it at all. So he might as well plan a dependency based on that. 

He could plan his way out of this. 

Siberia put another wrench in his plans. Bryan’s Russian was good, good enough to let him pass unnoticed in Moscow. And his cultural training was fine as well, he’d untrained his American conditioning to smile and engage. He’d known he was ready to put his covers to the test when he’d gone to Egypt and the souvenir sellers had spoken to him in Russian first, offering him deals that his American persona could never have gotten. 

But this was Siberia. His appearance and profile would raise questions. There was nothing for it, though. He got himself kitted out and trucked over. When he went to the only hotel with vacancy, a lingering Soviet building with requisite lighting and harsh angles, he was pleasantly surprised by a gathering of out-of-towners in the bar, morosely passing a bottle of vodka around. They looked at him suspiciously when he came in, but their scowls turned into open arms when he went to the bar, paid for a second bottle of the same, terrible, vodka -- but it was the real stuff at least, not the ersatz liquor that many relied on -- and put it on the table in the middle. 

He didn’t say much, sat and listened really, but it didn’t take long at all before he realised that all of them -- not just one, or two -- were here for his target. His company had recently lost favour with Putin which meant open season for disgruntled former business partners, aggrieved town officials, and bitter ex-wives who now felt that they could sue him to their heart’s content. 

To properly sue someone, papers had to be served and received. Bryan’s target had become untouchable at the very time that he’d become vulnerable. Bryan re-calculated his threat matrix and de-scaled how likely it was that his plan had been compromised. This gave him some options. 

So he stayed and gave the illusion of drinking. 

And over the next few days each of his drinking partners would wrap themselves up and attempt a new approach on the compound. Pretending to be lost, approaching by boat, trying to get hired as a landscaper -- all failed. 

Bryan has exchanged maybe twenty words with these men, but he thinks they’ve built a rapport. 

The next night, when Gavrie returned with his waterproof messenger tube still full of papers, thundercloud wrapped around his head, Bryan was waiting with the vodka on the table. 

“You know,” he started, “If we strained this through a couple of coffee filters it would taste better.” There were some approving mutters around the table. He could see them thinking, _this strange friend of ours has some good ideas._ Good. He wanted them open to his plans because he had another one. “It also occurs to me that alone,” he made a casually dismissive gesture, “we do not succeed. But perhaps…” and he let their imaginations do the work. 

He poured another round and let them drink up before he laid out the plan. 

It was stunning in its simplicity. It combined fragments of previously failed approaches. 

It went like this: 

Gavrie would row a small boat with tree of them in it, under cover of darkness, up to the service road. 

Then Ivan would flag down the food delivery truck driver, causing him to pause for long enough -- just long enough for Bryan to shimmy his way under the truck trailer. Holding onto the back of the cargo area would be ideal, it’s invisible to the driver. Unfortunately, it was very visible to the guards who stymied attempts two and three of his intrepid paper serving friends. Bryan used the word ‘friend’ lightly, in the way that only someone who relied on the help of a total stranger who in other circumstances he would never associate with. The torsion Bryan experienced was worse at this part of the truck but the front of the truck ran too hot with the engine and exhaust, it would be intolerable to cling to. 

Of course he wasn’t clinging unassisted. Turned out that Dima came from a family of leatherworkers and was more than capable of creating some makeshift straps that Bryan was now trusting his weight to. “I will make you a special pocket for the documents,” he’d said and Bryan had thanked him. Technically the documents would be served. 

Once the truck was in the loading bay, it was easy. All of the defenses were meant to keep people out, were sometimes there to stop guests from wandering, but no one wanted cold tea or a delay on their meal. The service entrance was always the soft underbelly. 

Bryan moved quickly, decisively, through the space. He found his target, the head of security, and disposed of him quickly. It wouldn’t look like an accident but that wasn’t what they brought Bryan in for. They brought him in to make a statement. 

Speaking of. He made a detour and burst into the bedroom. The disgraced oligarch was sitting in his brocade robe, reading a real, physical paper and he barely had the chance to grunt and grip at the open edges of his lapels before Bryan threw the package at him. 

“You’ve been served,” Bryan said, and while the man’s eyes were still bugging out Bryan jumped out of the window and out onto the helipad. Rich man like that would always want it ready to go -- no fueling delays, so Bryan hopped in and took off. Not a lot of anti-theft procedures on a helicopter. 

He felt a twinge knowing that his crew would not get a confirmation that their papers had been delivered, but he had technically kept his word. 

Bryan pulled back on the stick, one eye on the fuel gauge, the other on the clouds, and thought about how he would turn this into a story for Kim. Her daddy and the group of friendly men who had worked like little elves to help bring him home to her. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are loved!


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